Fiddler on the roof comes back, this time in Yiddish

A Fiddler on the roof played completely in Yiddish? It sounds meshugge, right? On the one hand, language is the mother tongue of the source material of Sholem Aleichem. On the other hand, the score of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein 's English script are loved by the generations. But the new transcendent production of the Yiddish Folksbiene National Theater's clbadic musical brings us closer to Tevye, Golde and the good and pious citizens of Anatevka than ever before.

Fiddler Afn Dakh directed by Joel Gray at the Jewish Heritage Museum, was established in 1965 by Shraga Friedman. Friedman, an actor-translator who immigrated to Israel from Warsaw at the beginning of the Second World War, presents a version of the screenplay and score that captures the essence of the original while not being literally servile. He directly quotes Tevye's stories from Aleichem's Dairyman in order to retain the emotional texture of Stein's book when there is no direct word-to-word conversion. The spirit of Harnick's words is intact, though, for the purposes of scansion, "If I were a rich man" becomes "Ven Ikh Bin a Rotshild" or "If I was a Rothschild ", a common Yiddish expression that means the same thing.

Gray's production takes place on an almost empty stage, where tables and chairs do all the physical work. The largely unadorned set of Beowulf Boritt and the United Shtetl costumes of Ann Hould-Ward allow the language – written, spoken and played – to shine. Even if you do not understand what the actors say, once the 15-piece orchestra hits those familiar melodies, you will not even need to look at the supertitles.

The result is an intense experience. Tevye's struggles (Steven Skybell), who must bend to his rigid Jewish traditions to ensure the happiness of his family, are even more striking in the native language of his character. When the inhabitants of Anatevka are forced to leave their homeland, this production allows you to see the moment when this "dead" language began to turn to darkness. This does not mean that Fiddler is austere. It's a well-balanced staging that goes for the emotional bowels but that does not sacrifice the musical.

Skybell is as big as life a Tevye that we could wish for, his one-sided monologues with God delivered with enthusiasm, his big numbers and his scenes filled with good humor. But he is also a beautifully conflicting Tevye, whose beliefs are easily influenced by his palpable love for his wife, Golde (Mary Illes, capturing the warm-hearted Mom Yiddisha at a T), and their five daughters. In this way, he turned Tevye into a human being.

The rest of the cast creates similar portraits. Jackie Hoffman was born to play Yente the matchmaker and she does not disappoint even in Yiddish. Rachel Zatcoff's Tsaytl is a study in the presence, her heart still on her sleeve as she stands in front of her parents so that she can marry Motl Kamzoyl (Ben Liebert), a modest tailor, instead of the rich butcher Leyzer-Volf (Bruce Sabath). Liebert is not a Motl as big as we have seen in the past; in fact, he is close to tears of pride and happiness at the end of his sensitive "Miracle of Miracles" ("Nisimlekh-Veniflo & # 39; oys"). You will also be, and often in this production, thanks to the glorious voices of the ensemble, the lush orchestra under the direction of Zalmen Mlotek, and the crystalline sound design of Dan Moses Schreier.

By letting the material speak for itself, the contemporary resonances of Fiddler on the Roof are born from Gray's production, without the literalism of the last Broadway revival (no red Gore-Tex parkas). is needed here). It becomes an even more moving evening when you happen to watch a musical about the Jews being expelled from their country in a theater inside a Holocaust museum that does not show up. is only at a glance of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.